


White Blanket

by sangueuk



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-21
Updated: 2011-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangueuk/pseuds/sangueuk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Character/Pairing</b>: Spock, Kirk, tiny bit of Kirk/McCoy if you squint<br/><b>Summary</b>: The battle for Nero is over, Spock meditates and takes stock. He thinks about Jim. It’s an attempt at a character study.<br/><b>Warnings</b>: No porn, so fold up your bunks, people! (Keep them handy for when normal services are resumed.)<br/><b>Disclaimer</b>: I mean no offence and court no profits, these boys belong to others more talented and deserving, I merely borrow them, play a while then return them all cleaned up and smiley.<br/><b>Author’s notes</b>: beta awarringtonn</p><p>Intriguing snippet: <i> “…as one-“he’d finished saying and it was as if Jim had grabbed him by the hand and pulled Spock over a cliff with him into free-fall.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	White Blanket

**White Blanket**  
Twenty minutes into his second meditation of the day, Spock was ready to think about Jim Kirk.

The name instantly conjured up the color blue and, inexplicably, the smell of freshly-cut grass. And along with thoughts about Jim, always – rage. Spock covered the emotion in a blanket of white calm.

Spock focused on the sensation of his breath entering his nostrils, cool and moist in the air-conditioned atmosphere of his quarters, and then warmed by his body as it left him. He counted ten breaths and thought – _Jim Kirk_. The blanket he’d created rippled but stayed in place. Now he would be free to consider the cadet’s qualities.

Nero was gone, earth was saved and he, Spock, all of the crew, needed to take stock.

In some ways, Jim reminded him of his mother. Ten calming breaths and Spock separated out the emotions warring with each other in the pit of his belly – love, deep, deep love and grief. The grief rose to his throat where he held it for a moment and then visualized it entering a vast, canopic jar. He sealed it with a heavy, carved lid, bearing the face of his Vulcan grandfather, and held the emotion safe.

“I will consider you later,” he promised and turned his attention to love.

His permission allowed the emotion to flare in his belly. He watched from a distance as it gradually filled his torso and extended downwards to his thighs like an advancing lava flow. He felt the warmth creeping upwards to his shoulders and towards the point where his Adam’s apple sat motionless. With calm and composure, he closed the passageway to his mind so that he could see it and remain aware, yet it could not advance further and affect his thinking. Love for Amanda smoldered like a burning coal. In his belly it was safe and contained.

“I will consider you later,” he repeated and he turned his attention to Jim.

Spock resisted the temptation to twitch his nostrils as the scent of grass appeared again. It was fascinating how the brain collected all this information and created associations without his permission. He was learning to observe these instances, rather than find their illogical and (as Terrans might describe them), ‘surreal’ combinations, alarming.

Spock allowed himself to play back his earlier visit from Jim. Confusion floated from his sternum like pieces of a broken glass, swirling before his mind’s eye, masking his view of Jim’s face as he entered Spock’s quarters. Spock visualized the glass coming together as one solid, seamless form, and resting soundlessly on a shelf. He could see Jim again, he could hear him.

“I know you weren’t expecting me, Spock.”

“Is there a problem, Captain?”

“Spock, I owe you an apology—”

“As I do, you, Captain.”

“Just call me Jim, for fuck’s sake,” he said with a grin that would have surprised Spock, had he allowed it. So far, the emotions he’d detected in Jim had been resentment, aggression, rage, hatred, ambition, fear, but nothing as bright as this. He’d never seen Jim smile.

Spock shifted and composed himself internally. He knew that his own external mask would not have slipped, yet he’d noted how Jim’s eyes had tracked his raised eyebrow.

“Hey, Spock, I’m trying to break the ice here.”

Perhaps Jim was as astute in reading people as he was in reading crisis situations. Time would tell.

“We ‘broke the ice’ when we fought side by side, _Jim_.”

Spock was aware that Jim then peered at his face with that human obsession for examining facial expressions for signs of emotion.  
“That we did!” Jim grinned again and stepped closer. “Mind if I sit down.”

“I have no opinion on the matter.”

Jim sprawled on Spock’s armchair. “We could be a great team. The other you, Spock, the ‘nice’ one, he says we were a legend in his reality. They wrote songs about us.”

Spock observed that Jim’s face changed constantly. Until his time on Earth, Spock had not been given to metaphors; in fact, he’d found they interfered with his thinking process. But he’d learned, while teaching at the academy, how humans grasped ideas and concepts more easily through analogy, allegory and figurative language. Indeed was this not how he controlled his own emotions by using metaphor to visualize and observe from a safe distance?

Just as the sky was in constant flux – should one take a moment to consider it – so too, Jim’s face, mouth, eyebrows, lips, seemed to be in perpetual, nuanced shift. Jim bore his emotions with naked abandon. Spock knew that he would have to readjust his inherent discomfort to these displays if he was to develop their working relationship.

“These other two, our counterparts, they are not us,” he’d said.

“No, they’re not.” Jim looked at his bruised hands for a moment and extended a leg, shook it and winced. “I really need to get to sickbay, get myself looked at. See how Bones is doing with Pike—”

“Yes,” Spock said, then surprised himself by adding, “A mind meld would be logical, Jim.”

“A mind meld? I’ve already had one of those this week…can’t say I—”

“You are aware, therefore, of the volume of information that can be transferred in both directions, with the utmost efficiency. Indeed it would take years of—”

“Guying around?”

“I prefer the term, ‘shared professional experiences’.” Spock indicated to Jim to stand so that they faced each other. “It is logical. We have already demonstrated we work efficiently together. We compliment each other, if you will. I believe we would both derive benefit from assisting that process.”

“Logical, huh?” Jim shrugged. “Fuck it, why not?”

Spock recalled that he’d felt a ripple of irritation when, as he placed his fingers on Jim’s face, the acting captain had winked and muttered, “Hey, this won’t make me your boyfriend will it?”

Looking back, Spock realized that this quality Jim had, his need to subvert, to upend, to tease, was similar to his own desire and compulsion to question everything. It manifested itself in different ways, but Spock was determined to understand rather than recoil or judge.

He had intended a light meld and entered Jim’s mind cautiously. He’d planned to allow himself time to adjust, and reciprocate in kind – like for like.

Thinking back, Spock realized he should have known that entering Jim’s mind would not be a simple affair.

Now, in his quarters, the white blanket smoothing the rage Spock would still feel if he allowed himself to, he braced himself for the experience of reliving the meld. He visualized an abundance of monitors stacked in orderly rows. In meditation, he was detached, viewing each of Jim’s thoughts in the order in which he chose, increasing the volume when he decided to, freezing frames, allowing the multi-sensory elements of each of Jim’s thoughts or memories to be examined logically, without allowing himself to be pulled in.

Tiredness, rawness from the events of the past few hours had made a dent in Spock, that he believed he had gained control over, but no. It explained why he’d momentarily ‘lost control’; but one thing Spock was learning, was how to forgive himself.

“…as one,” he’d finished saying, and it was as if Jim had grabbed him by the hand and pulled Spock over a cliff with him into free-fall. While Jim whooped and buzzed with the joy of adrenaline, Spock entered his thoughts and ricocheted through the first three or four seconds. He had no idea where up or down was, nor how to regain his breath until, finally, he seized control of the meld, feeling, seeing, understanding, but not being buffeted and scarred by the sheer _heat_ of Jim Kirk’s extraordinarily dynamic mind.

Spock observed and sensed terror, Jim’s terror, many times: a bearded man’s face looming towards them, tobacco-laced saliva hitting Jim’s face like acid; another man’s hand gripped Jim and squashed his cheeks together, gazed into his eyes, “Blue, that way,” a gruff voice said; Jim’s held breath as he ran out of a building, children’s voices chanting a rhyme in unison; the terror transmuted to euphoria as he looked over his shoulder at school; at Iowa; at McCoy; perfumed fingers stroking Jim’s face, and a sudden onslaught of promises, gasps, feminine voices; ecstasy, _release_ , the grip of a man’s hands on the back of Jim’s neck; searing pain, as Jim’s/Spock’s lip split; Jim rocking on a bed, gazing at a holovid of George Kirk, “Happy fucking, birthday…” through sobs, he was four, he was fifteen, he was twenty-one, he was crying, the crashing of metal and a deep voice, “Citizen, what is your—” and the ear-splitting sound of an electric guitar, the roar of an engine, the soaring violin, his frustration, frustration, his boredom, his ideas, closeness, Bones, Bones, he said and… plans, spiraling like genetic ladders stuffed with rhymes and pictures and associations, and there was Elder Spock, another Kirk, closeness, love, pain, grief and—” Spock pulled away with a start.

Twenty five seconds had passed. Spock reeled in from the vortex and straightened. He folded his hands at the small of his back. His heart thrummed, and he looked forward to quenching his thirst when Jim left. Before him, Jim panted and shook his head. The momentary bridge Spock had created between them still held as Jim outwardly showed the effects of the meld; he, of course, suppressed all outward signs while equally as affected.

Finally Jim said, “Looks like we both fucking hated school, huh?”

Spock nodded.

“And you appear to like chess?”

Spock recalled how he’d felt pain on his shoulder where Jim had clapped his hand before he’d sauntered out.

He examined the realization he’d had at the time that Jim’s visit to sickbay was not about having his physical state assessed, after all. It appeared that despite his earlier conclusion about Jim’s expressive face, the acting captain _was_ able to hide his feelings, when it suited him, after all.

Nearing the end of his meditation, Spock gazed at the monitors which he’d conjured to represent Jim Kirk’s mind and switched them off, one by one. In his mind’s eye, he then opened the dam between his mind and his belly to initiate the lava flow and spent a few moments with his mother. They would arrive at Earth within the hour, the only home he now had. He would need to prepare himself, and his mother would help.

FIN

 

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